These past two days in class we have been discussing Frequency Tables. This is a topic that isn't exactly the toughest, but still important. Yesterday, we talked about what they were and we practiced making and reading some of them. The kiddos seemed to have a pretty good grasp on it. I didn't want to just spend one class period on it because I felt it deserved a little more importance. So, I came up with this idea.
If you have ever worked with kids, you know that truly care about what interests them. They get excited about things that they like, and if I ever incorporate some of their interests in class, then I've got them on the hook. I thought with teaching frequency tables, this would be a great opportunity to have the students utilize topics that were important to them. This may seem like an obvious idea, but I did it anyways :)
I started planning out a Create Your Own Frequency Table. Just off the title... boring. When you dig deeper, the kiddos' task is to come up with some sort of poll question. It can be any question that they wanted. The example that I gave all day was... Who is your favorite Avenger? (I love superhero stuff) Just fyi... mine is the Hulk!
The idea is for the kids to come up with their own question about something that interests them. I got the typical questions. What is your favorite pet? What is your favorite sport? What is your favorite subject? Some of my personal favorite questions: What is your favorite planet? Gemstone? DC hero? (superheroes rock). The kids also had to come up with five different answer choices for their classmates to choose from. This was to limit the range of answers they got.
I know frequency tables are usually meant for determining the frequency of numbers and fractions, but I felt that they could be used in this way. We were still calculating the frequency, just using non-numerical things. The students would go around and get the answer to their poll question from each of their classmates. They would take the results that they got and determine the frequency. They had to fill out a frequency table. The table had 3 parts:
1. Answer Choices
2. Tally - to tally up the amount for each answer choice.
3. Frequency - the frequency that each answer got.
So in reality, the kiddos were still calculating frequency, but they were so much more invested because it was something relevant to them. You should have seen how excited they got to go around and ask their question to everyone. Of course, I walked around and made sure they were asking the questions and filling out their tables correctly.
They were, and I decided to take this one step further. I'm always hearing how important it is to write in math class. Right WA & AB? ;) Our kids all have blogs similar to this one, so I had them write a blog post. They had to answer these 5 questions:
1. What is your poll question and answer choices?
2. What was the most common response?
3. What was the least common response?
4. What was the difference between the most and least common response?
5. Personal thoughts. Were you surprised by anything? What did you think about this?
Of course, they had to write in complete sentences. I had one kid come up and show me his blog post, and it was riddled full of run on sentences. I asked him, "Would you turn this into Mrs. Burton?" He smirked, and replied, "No..." Good try ;) But the majority really got into to writing their blog posts. They wanted to add pictures of their choices, and highlight the most popular response.
I thought the day went extremely well, and I left school feeling very positive about the day. The kiddos were excited and invested, and they just thought they were doing polls and asking their friends questions. But in reality, they were determining the frequency of the responses they just didn't know it. Math without being overwhelmed. I love it.
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